They Called It a “Takeover”. Then They Took Over.
In April a founder of Sienos grupė proposed that the board resign and hand power to newer volunteers. In August she became its director, and a volunteer who had joined in March took a seat on it.
From the first evening it looked to me like a coup, and by the end of the summer it became one.
For readers new to this series: Sienos grupė is a Vilnius NGO that helps migrants and asylum seekers at Lithuania’s border with Belarus. Gegužės 1-osios profesinė sąjunga (the May 1st Labour Union, G1PS) is a left-wing trade union, and the two organisations share many of the same people. My husband Andrei and I volunteered for both. On 28 April 2026 the volunteers of Sienos grupė were told at a meeting that the board had confirmed two episodes of sexual harassment by the director, Mantautas Šulskus (my first post). This post is about what happened to power in Sienos grupė after that meeting. The facts come from chat records and from documents filed with the state register. The judgements are mine, and I mark them as mine.
The day after the meeting
On 29 April a shareholder of Sienos grupė wrote in the volunteers’ Signal chat that she was shocked by the meeting. The volunteers, she wrote, were being invited to discuss situations that resembled „pletkų malūno girnas“ (the millstones of a gossip mill), and the organisation was no court entitled to apply „linčo teismą“ (lynch law). Then she asked „ar merginos, kurios sukėlė šį vidinį organizacijos erzelį, yra tinkamos savanoriauti su kitos kultūros asmenimis“ (whether the girls who caused this internal stir in the organisation are fit to volunteer with people of another culture), pointing to their „psichologinio pažeidžiamumo“ (psychological vulnerability) [E014a]. She deleted the message later. It survives because Aušrinė Gogelytė, one of the founders, quoted it in her reply: „toks požiūris, kurį ką tik išsakei yra nepriimtinas“ (the view you have just expressed is unacceptable) [E014].
At 18:23 Emilija Švobaitė answered. She is a founder of Sienos grupė and a former chair and lawyer of G1PS [E001a]. She thanked the author of that message by name and wrote that on the process she agreed with her completely. Then: „Tiesą sakant, visa šita procedūra yra tai dėl ko priėmiau sprendimą pasitraukti iš dalininkų ir sprendimų priėmėjų Sienos Grupėje“ (To tell the truth, this whole procedure is the reason I decided to withdraw from the shareholders and decision-makers of Sienos Grupė) [E016a]. She called the board’s handling of the complaints an „improvizacinis tribunolas“ (improvised tribunal) and wrote: „Nesu nei aukų, nei budelių pusėje, neteisinu padarytų veiksmų“ (I am on the side of neither the victims nor the executioners, I do not justify the actions that were taken) [E016]. Here is the message in full. Its last sentence is a proposal:
„Ačiū, @Eligija už žinutę. Nebūtinai dėl visko pritariu, bet dėl proceso — visiškai sutinku. Tiesą sakant, visa šita procedūra yra tai dėl ko priėmiau sprendimą pasitraukti iš dalininkų ir sprendimų priėmėjų Sienos Grupėje. Man nepriimtina, kad esant daugybei darbų, susijusių su advokacija, finansavimo paieškomis, tiesiogine pagalba migruojantiems žmonėms ir t.t., sprendimus organizacijoje priimantys žmonės 1,5 mėn. iki išnaktų posėdžiauja svarstydami niekur organizacijos įstatuose nenumatytas procedūras, diskutuoja apie sankcijas vadovui ir pan. Vėliau savanoriams viskas iškomunikuojama taip dviprasmiškai, kad, pasirodo, reikia asmeniškai pasiskambinti norint sužinoti informaciją. :) Mano pirminis siūlymas šitai situacijai spręsti buvo sutarti dėl tvarkos kaip sprendžiami tokie skundai ir tuomet, gavus asmeniškai pateiktą skundą, jį nagrinėti pagal patvirtintas taisykles — tiek dėl proceso, tiek dėl sankcijų, jei tokių reiktų, tiek dėl komunikacijos visai bendruomenei. Bet buvo nuspręsta steigti imrpovizacinį tribunolą ir tam nepritariu. Nesu nei aukų, nei budelių pusėje, neteisinu padarytų veiksmų, bet sprendimai dėl paties proceso ir to, kaip viskas vyksta, man atrodo, yra be galo žalingi organizacijai. Tikrai siūlyčiau visiems steigėjams svarstyti apie atsistatydinimą in corpore ir atidavimą valdžios naujai, jau po 2022 metų atėjusiems savanoriams, turintiems laiko padėti žmonėms, ambicijų keisti migracijos politiką ir auginti organizaciją.“
(Thank you, @Eligija, for the message. I do not necessarily agree with everything, but on the process I agree completely. To tell the truth, this whole procedure is the reason I decided to withdraw from the shareholders and decision-makers of Sienos Grupė. It is unacceptable to me that, with a large amount of work related to advocacy, the search for funding, direct assistance to migrating people, etc., the people making decisions in the organisation have for 1.5 months been sitting in meetings until after midnight, considering procedures not provided for anywhere in the organisation’s statutes, discussing sanctions against the leader and so on. Later everything is communicated to the volunteers so ambiguously that, it turns out, you have to phone in person to find anything out. :) My original proposal for resolving this situation was to agree on a procedure for handling such complaints and then, once a complaint had been submitted in person, to examine it under the approved rules, as to the process, as to sanctions if any were needed, and as to communication to the whole community. But it was decided to set up an improvised tribunal, and I do not approve of that. I am on the side of neither the victims nor the executioners, I do not justify the actions that were taken, but the decisions about the process itself and how everything is going seem to me extremely harmful to the organisation. I would really suggest that all the founders consider resigning in corpore and handing power to the new volunteers who came after 2022, who have the time to help people and the ambition to change migration policy and grow the organisation.) [E016a]
Three people gave it a thumbs down: me, Aušrinė and one more member. One person gave it a heart, and that was the author of the message about “the girls” [E016a]. I quoted part of this message in my first post without her name. I did not quote the end of it then. I should have, because the end is where the story was going.
Two women had been harassed by the director, and the day before the board had confirmed it. A founder answered by calling the process a tribunal and thanking the person who doubted the women. In the same message she asked for a transfer of power. It looked suspicious to me at once. In my view I was reading the opening move of a coup.
That evening Šulskus wrote to the chat himself. He asked everyone not to develop the topic there and to “trust the Board, the Founders and the Workgroup”. He also wrote: “Emilija has paused her role at the Board and the Founders’ groups during the process of Workgroup (reasons she will explain herself if she wants)” [E019]. Emilija Švobaitė put a heart on his message [E020].
The volunteer who joined in March
Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė accepted the invitation to the volunteers’ chat on 20 March 2026, five weeks before the meeting [E017a]. I know her as one of the founders of G1PS. By my account, at the 28 April meeting she argued against making the case public and asked who would take over Šulskus’s duties. She later confirmed both in her own words: “yes, I was saying that the case should not go out public because of Right wing hate towards Sienos group … and yes, I was asking who will take over Mantautas duties?” [E093]
On 29 April at 19:05, while the chat was still arguing about victim blaming, she wrote: „čatai nėra gera vieta tokioms diskusijoms … priimti kažkokius sprendimus vien remiantis grupėje vykstančia diskusija yra labai žalinga praktika“ (chats are not a good place for such discussions … making any decisions solely on the basis of a discussion in the group is a very harmful practice) [E017]. Mantautas Šulskus gave it a thumbs up. So did Emilija Švobaitė. Andrei and I gave it a thumbs down [E017a]. An hour and forty minutes later Šulskus asked the chat for the same thing in his own words, and Bagdžiūnaitė gave his message a thumbs up [E020].
In my view a volunteer five weeks into an organisation does not rush to shut down a discussion about the director’s harassment unless she already knows which side will come out on top. Her question at the meeting was who would take his place. In my reading that is the question of someone who has noticed a vacancy.
The next evening I wrote my last message in that chat [E021]. I wrote that I could not wait for the promised meeting while some of them were shutting me and others up. I asked: „Ar atėjo jums į galvą, kad čia gali būti išprievartavimo auka? Atrodo kad ne, o aš esu čia“ (Did it occur to you that there might be a rape victim here? Apparently not, and I am here). I wrote that one founder had thrown dirt at the victims and another had thanked her for it. Then I added „O dar kita mane užčiaupia“ (and yet another one shuts me up), tagged Agnė and told her that what we had seen the day before „buvo ne nuomonės, o faktai“ (were facts, not opinions). I left Sienos grupė that evening, and Andrei left with me.
17 August: the handover
In Lithuania an NGO like Sienos grupė is a viešoji įstaiga (public institution, VšĮ). Its shareholders appoint the director, and their decisions are filed with the state Register of Legal Entities.
On 3 June Šulskus, still the director, invited the shareholders by email to a general meeting. It took place on 17 August 2026 at 10:00 in Vilnius, and the protocol was registered on 14 September [E090b].
Three shareholders took part: Julija Kėkštaitė, Mantautas Šulskus and Emilija Švobaitė. The protocol records a quorum. In October 2025 the organisation had eight shareholders, Aušrinė Gogelytė among them [E003b]. Her name is not in the August protocol. Šulskus chaired the meeting and Švobaitė kept the minutes. Four people attended as observers: Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė, Dangira Burdaitė, Agnė Rimkutė and Vaiva Vinskaitė.
Every decision passed by three votes to none. The four observers became shareholders. Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė and Agnė Rimkutė were appointed to the council. The protocol records that Šulskus had informed the council in writing that same day that he was stepping down, and then:
„Emilija Švobaitė nuo 2026-08-21 skiriama Sienos Grupė VšĮ direktore neterminuotam laikotarpiui.“
(From 21 August 2026 Emilija Švobaitė is appointed director of Sienos Grupė VšĮ for an indefinite term.) [E090b]
The proposal describes her as „Sienos Grupė VšĮ dalininkę“, a shareholder of Sienos Grupė. The start date was first typed as 17 August, then crossed out by hand and replaced with 21 August, and Švobaitė initialled the correction. Šulskus took part as a shareholder, and nothing in the protocol changes that [E090b].
Put the two dates side by side. On 29 April Emilija Švobaitė wrote that she had decided to withdraw from the shareholders and decision-makers. On 17 August she was a shareholder who kept the minutes and was appointed director for an indefinite term. On 29 April she proposed that the founders resign together and hand power to newer volunteers. On 17 August a council seat went to a volunteer who had joined the chat in March and who had asked, at the very first meeting, who would take over the director’s duties. The founder who had called victim blaming by its name was not in the room. The man whose conduct started all of it chaired the meeting and kept his share. In my view the coup I sensed in April was completed in August, and it went the way it had been announced.
“Things will definitely not be back to normal”
Between the April chat and the August protocol, Aušrinė Gogelytė, the founder who had called victim blaming by its name, wrote about it several times, publicly and privately. I want to put her words next to the protocol.
On 29 April at 19:28, later the same evening in the volunteers’ chat, she wrote: „Ir tai tikrai yra victim blaming, labai akivaizdus to atvejis.“ (And that really is victim blaming, a very clear-cut case of it.) [E018]
The next day, 30 April, at 18:44, she wrote to me privately:
„Eligijos ir Emilijos elgesys buvo siaubingas, buvo kraupu skaityti. Ir gėda skaityti.“
(The behaviour of Eligija and Emilija was appalling; it was horrifying to read. And shameful to read.) [E022]
Eligija is the person Emilija Švobaitė thanked by name at 18:23 [E016a], and Emilija is the author of the message about the „improvizacinis tribunolas“. In my view these are the two women Aušrinė meant.
On 22 May she wrote in a public comment under my Instagram post [E028]:
„he has been suspended for a while now… We have found a replacement for him, and the council members that exibited [sic] such intolerable victim-blaming behaviour will no longer be members of the council, that was decided weeks ago.“
In another comment the same evening she added [E030]:
„Things will definitely not be back to normal, I can assure you of that… even if we have to uproot everything in our NGO to make it happen.“
She did not name the council members in that comment. In my view she meant the women she had named to me privately three weeks earlier. On 17 August, less than thirteen weeks later, one of them, Emilija Švobaitė, was appointed director of Sienos grupė for an indefinite term [E090b]. She did not leave the leadership. She was given the top of it. In my view the uprooting reached Andrei and me, expelled from the union on 23 July, and did not reach her.
On 3 July, six weeks after those comments, Aušrinė wrote to Andrei in Signal:
„Hey! How are things? Jau kurį laiką grįžau prie SiG, visai good things been happening ir progresas. Kaip jums sekasi?“
(Hey! How are things? I came back to SiG a while ago, quite good things been happening and progress. How are you doing?) [E046a]
Seven weeks after that message, on 21 August, the woman whose behaviour she had called appalling became the director, and the man whose conduct started it all had chaired the meeting that appointed her [E090b]. In my view that is the “progress”.
The union’s condition, met by the union’s own people
On 10 July the council of G1PS sent Sienos grupė an official statement [E075c]. It condemned „toleruojamo seksualinio priekabiavimo, įvykdyto galios pozicijoje esančio asmens“ (tolerated sexual harassment committed by a person in a position of power) and suspended cooperation „iki kol Mantautas Šulskus nebeužims direktoriaus pareigų ir nebus patvirtinta sistema, užkardanti panašaus pobūdžio atvejus ateityje“ (until Mantautas Šulskus no longer holds the post of director and a system preventing similar cases in future is approved). The statement says it grew out of a statement by G1PS members „aktyviai dalyvaujančios ir „Sienos grupės“ veikloje“ (who are also active in Sienos grupė). It does not name them.
Thirteen days later the same union expelled Andrei and me. Five weeks after the statement, the first half of its condition was met. A former chair and lawyer of G1PS took the director’s chair, and a woman I know as a founder of G1PS sat on the council beside her. The protocol of 17 August has no item about a system to prevent harassment [E090b].
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In my view this is what the harassment case was used for. Two women were harassed, and their complaint became the lever that moved Šulskus out of the chair. The people who pulled that lever had spent April telling the rest of us to take the subject out of the chat. One of them called the process a tribunal and thanked the person who doubted the victims. When the chair was free, it went to them. By then the people who had spoken up for the victims were gone. I had left Sienos grupė, and G1PS had expelled me and my husband.
I consider it the height of cynicism to use harassed women as a ladder to power and to kick me in the head on the way up. I see nothing left-wing in it. The left I joined these organisations for stands with the people who were hurt and against the people who hold power over them. Here the people who were hurt were used up, and power stayed inside the same circle with a new name on the door.
One date in that protocol stays with me. The shareholders were invited to the meeting by the director’s email of 3 June [E090b], more than five weeks before G1PS publicly made his departure a condition of cooperation. In my view the whole coup was a staged performance, and everyone involved knew the script except small fry like Andrei and me, who believed that a harassment complaint was about harassment.
On 21 August, the day Emilija Švobaitė became director, I finished my second course of psychiatric day treatment that summer. The first ran from 22 May to 3 July, the second from 13 July (as I wrote last week). My doctor wrote in my discharge summary that the negative reaction of the two organisations’ leadership had made my condition worse.
“An attempt to take over control”
On 23 July, the day G1PS expelled us, Rytis Alekna replied in the union’s Signal group to the chair’s message to Andrei [E084a]. The Central Electoral Commission’s website lists him as a Social Democratic Party candidate in the 2023 municipal elections [E084e]. He began by admitting that he did not know my husband:
„Aš to Andrei nepažįstu, tačiau šitoje fazėje rekomenduočiau kreiptis į atitinkamas institucijas dėl šio asmens(ų) background’o patikrinimo.“
(I do not know this Andrei, but at this stage I would recommend turning to the relevant institutions to have this person’s or persons’ background checked.)
Within the hour he added:
„Šita kampanija atrodo kaip bandymas perimti G1ps’o kontrolę per vidinius konfliktus ir išdeginimą. Jeigu pareiškėjas mano, kad buvo įvykdytas kriminalas, tai tegu kreipiasi į policiją.“
(This campaign looks like an attempt to take over control of G1PS through internal conflicts and burnout. If the complainant thinks a crime was committed, let him go to the police.)
Four people reacted with a thumbs up [E084a].
Andrei is a non-white migrant. When a politician who does not know him recommends that “the relevant institutions” check his “background”, I read it as a veiled threat with the security services, the kind of institution a migrant has every reason to fear. I described this exchange when I wrote about our expulsion.
In the union’s chat he was simply “Rytis A”, and as far as I saw, his name surfaced around the days of our expulsion. In 2024 Laurynas Šedvydis, the Social Democrat who chairs the Seimas Human Rights Committee, thanked him by name as part of his closest election team [E084f]. By my account, Šedvydis watches my stories and ignores me. In my view that tells you which circle Alekna comes from.
So Alekna saw a coup too. I saw one in April and he saw one in July, and the difference lies in what each of us was looking at. I saw a founder’s written proposal to hand over power, and four months later a protocol in the state register that carried it out. He looked at two rank-and-file members, one of whom was in psychiatric day treatment on the day he wrote, and in my view what he saw there was his own preoccupation with power. Andrei and I never wanted a seat on anyone’s council. We wanted justice, and we wanted the people who did this to answer for what they did.
Three and a half weeks after his message, people from his own union took control of Sienos grupė. They did it through an internal conflict and through the burnout of those who objected. In my reading he described his own camp’s method and pinned it on us.
In my view these people are obsessed with power. Alekna named what is at stake for them in the same message: G1PS „nebėra tik pankų būrelis, o realiai veikianti organizacija su demokratiškai išrinktais valdymo organais, biudžetu ir įtaka darbo rinkoje“ (is no longer just a bunch of punks, but a functioning organisation with democratically elected governing bodies, a budget and influence in the labour market) [E084a]. For people who think like this, any discussion and any cry for justice is a threat to their power. In their world the people who report harassment are saboteurs, and a migrant husband is a case for a background check. A harassment scandal is a chance to change the name on the director’s door.
The right wing as a bogeyman
At the meeting on 28 April the argument against going public was the right wing, or in Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė’s own words, “Right wing hate towards Sienos group” [E093]. In my view this is how the circle keeps its own people in line. Volunteers and members are told that any public criticism will be picked up by the right and used to hound the organisation, so the responsible thing is to stay quiet. Do not believe it.
Look at what this circle does with its own comment sections. On 21 October the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson’s office posted an interview in which the Ombudsperson promises that from next year the office will have „daugiau svertų siekti realių pokyčių“ (more levers to achieve real change) [E106]. I commented with a link to my post about her and her friends. About three hours later Andrei opened the post from another account. My comment was not there, and the counter showed two comments. One of the two was a joke about how unfair it is that men are not hired to clean women’s showers, illustrated with a photo of a woman cleaning a men’s shower, and asking why a man at a urinal should feel uncomfortable when a „nagla“ (brazen) woman comes in to clean [E106]. That comment stayed. It was not the first time either: in August I asked the office under its own post why it was hiding comments [E090c].
On 20 October G1PS and Sienos grupė filed a joint reply to our appeal in the Regional Administrative Court. One lawyer signed it for both organisations: the managing partner of ReLex, the law firm whose website lists Emilija Švobaitė as a senior lawyer. They asked the court to make Andrei and me pay their legal costs, 1,210 euros by their invoices [E108]. Three days later G1PS shared an LRT story about a Ukrainian worker who has to pay 10,000 euros for litigating against her employer [E107]. Under that post Andrei asked the union to write as well about how it asks a court to award legal costs against its own victims, against us [E108]. His comment is gone, and by his account he has been blocked. The jibe from a stranger stayed: „Atidirbinėjat fondo pinigus? Dirbkite kol galite“ (Working off the fund’s money? Work while you can) [E107].
In my view the pattern is the same on both pages. A question about harassment, or about who pays whom, disappears. A sexist joke or a sneer about grant money stays. That choice costs them nothing, and it lets institutions with a web of connections and steady funding look like the besieged victims of the right. A woman who asks why harassment was covered up does not fit that picture, so her comment goes.
What they really fear, in my view, is us, and anyone who says out loud that their conduct should be investigated and that they should answer for it. The right wing is a useful bogeyman. We are the people they actually remove.
What happens next
Our appeal against the decision of the Lietuvos administracinių ginčų komisija (the administrative disputes commission) is before the Regionų administracinis teismas (Regional Administrative Court). On 22 October the same court accepted our appeal against the refusal of the Vyriausioji tarnybinės etikos komisija (Chief Official Ethics Commission) to examine the Equal Opportunities Ombudsperson’s conflict of interest, and asked the commission for its response. Andrei and I have also filed a new complaint with the Ombudsperson’s office about how G1PS treated us after we spoke up. Sienos grupė has had a new director since 21 August, and the document that appointed her says nothing about protecting the next volunteer.
Quotations from Lithuanian documents are my own translations. Exhibit numbers refer to the evidence page.
Series “What they do in the shadows”, in English:
- Two letters: what I experienced in Sienos grupė and G1PS
- Evidence index, in four parts: Part 1 · Part 2 · Part 3 · Part 4
- Birutė Sabatauskaitė protects the reputation of Sienos grupė and G1PS
- Lithuania’s G1PS trade union rewrote its rules after I reported harassment, then expelled me
- Eighteen Techniques of Propaganda: How Emil Starodubov Tried Them Out on Me
- Mes Esame Visur: The Same Circle Behind Every Door I Knocked On
- They Called It a Takeover. Then They Took Over. (you are here)
Lietuviškai:
- Du laiškai: ką patyriau „Sienos grupėje“ ir G1PS
- Dešimt iš dešimties žmogaus teisių srityje: kontrolierės namų ūkis
- G1PS profesinė sąjunga perrašė savo taisykles po to, kai pranešiau apie priekabiavimą, o paskui mane pašalino
- Aštuoniolika propagandos technikų: kaip Emil Starodubov jas išbandė su manimi
- Mes Esame Visur: tas pats ratas už kiekvienų durų, į kurias beldžiausi
- Jie tai vadino „perėmimu“. Paskui perėmė.
Also on Substack: read this post on Substack.
